Garden in the Rain

Here is the garden today after pouring rain all day. There are bad floods in NSW, and heavy soaking rain here. The soil changes from a dusty grey to a healthy looking peaty colour which reminds me of Ireland.


It has soaked the fruit and made the skins of grapes and tomatoes split with excess moisture. It's lovely to wander in the rain with the dripping leaves sending drops down my neck when I reach to pick a ripe fruit.
The cover on the pool looks less than appealing, but it keeps the water temperature up - it's currently about 28 degrees despite the rain. It also prevents evaporation, though that is not a problem today.





Time to make chutney with the tomatoes and onions. I bought some green apples and raisins to put in with the spices, and used a recipe from www.allrecipes.com  that was called apple and tomato chutney.
It worked well - and I added a spoonful of pectin with the sugar which gave a good consistency.(Thankyou Katie). It's probably a bit too sweet but quite edible.

And we can't let the season of summer pass without making lots of tomato sauce. Onions (both red and spring onions) from the garden, local garlic, and a bit of basil added at the end of a slow gentle cooking... We bottled some, froze some, and ate some on wholemeal spaghetti, with a fresh pesto sauce from garden herbs. We didn't even need oil, though a good dollop of olive oil would have tasted good too.

 

Note on Alzheimer's.

Mum had another great session with great-grandson 1. She was rapt. He was amazingly compliant, and smiled and kicked again like he knew it would go down well.



Mum carried him down to show him off to the other residents (whether they wanted to see him or not). She again got confused with whose child he actually was, and whether he was a he or a she, but she did get across that he was somehow related, and she basked in his inherited good looks....


Children are often able to read  social situations somehow, and he certainly seemed to know what was expected.... He had, of course, had fun on a nearby beach beforehand, where he splashed in the sea and sat in a cabina when the sun got too hot, and played wigwams with his doting grandma while we all shoved tasty fruit morsels his way... Happy days!